Aspects of the disclosure relate to computer hardware and software. In particular, one or more aspects of the disclosure generally relate to computer hardware and software for transferring data between applications through use of an intermediate user interface.
In modern commerce, customer information is maintained by a diverse array of organizations. Each organization has different systems and standards for storing and accessing customer information. Although there have been attempts to standardize customer information systems, no attempt has succeeded due to the unique needs and capabilities of each organization. Furthermore, different organizations or business units within an organization often upgrade customer information systems at different times, resulting in distinct and different user interfaces and ways of retrieving customer information.
Often, a user of customer information systems will have to use information from one customer information system as input to another customer information system. If the customer information systems are different and have not been designed to work together, the user is forced to manually copy over each item of customer information from one system to the other. This problem is especially prevalent where a legacy text-based system provides an interface to an essential customer information database. Modern forms used to interact with other organizations and business units are frequently web-based forms. In order to transfer information from the legacy text-based system, a user must manually copy each individual item of customer information from the text-based system to the web-based form, one item at a time.
This problem is particularly prevalent in the field of credit reporting. Each major provider of credit reporting services tracks and maintains databases of similar customer information. However, the information is stored differently by each provider. When a customer seeks to dispute information contained in a credit report, a user must retrieve customer information records and manually copy the information over to a dispute resolution form item by item.